“Kamal, I have a solution for the Arab/Israeli conflict.
What you need to do is take a bunch of Jewish girls, and a bunch of Muslim guys, and let them to fuck.
The babies would be Jewish through the mother, and Muslim through the father, and in one generation they would put an end to this bullshit.”
-My rather brilliant friend, the lovely Ms. K, who is Jewish, reflecting on her observations in Israel over coffee.
My solution is to get that entire area converted OUT of any sort of Abrahamic religion.
As an adherent of an Abrahamic religion who has benefited greatly therefrom I naturally disagree.
Not to mention its remarkably arrogant to project one’s own concerns on a region characterized by a unique set of faith traditions and cultures going back almost 4000 years. Without “Abrahamic” religions of the area the people there would have still been performing human sacrifice and other such delights, as is well documented in the cultures of the region. Moreover the dispute isn’t even a religious one at its original roots
The original zionists were atheists, and more or less had to drag the rest of their ethnically Jewish brothers kicking along. This is well documented history, by the way, concerning the history of zionism. Also its a fact that the Ashkenazi Jewish elite of Israel has treated Eastern Jews, Mizrahi, Yemeni, and Ethiopian, almost as bad as they’ve treated Arabs, with documented incidents of discrimination, and even eugenics applied on the populations.
This is a subject matter I’m fairly well read up on.
[…] A solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict: wishful thinking here, but alas, the case of the ‘rape by deception’ shows why that’s untenable. […]
“Not to mention its remarkably arrogant to project one’s own concerns on a region characterized by a unique set of faith traditions and cultures going back almost 4000 years.”
Exactly what Muslims did to South Asia!!!
Karma’s a bitch.
Is every single White American citizen today responsible for slavery or the death of the Natives?
Not at all.
However, that being said, there is a “collective karma” that leaves it’s impressions on a place or a collective body. Part of the problems America faces today has to do with the CHOICES first made by it’s ringleaders centuries ago. Choices that had far reaching consequences, which the descendents of those ringleaders are facing today. Killing off tribes, cultures, people and entire ways of life as it’s consequences in the today. Enslaving millions of people and forcing them to work for free has it’s consequences today.
Same with Islam.
Far reaching consequences.
Correction: “Same with Islam.
Far reaching consequences.”
Should read: “Same with ancient and medieval Islamic imperialism…… far reaching consequences!”
A an ideology or collective body as it were, reaps what it sews.
” by a unique set of faith traditions and cultures going back almost 4000 years. Without “Abrahamic” religions of the area the people there would have still been performing human sacrifice and other such delights, as is well documented in the cultures of the region.”
What?!?!? More Kool Aid!
Where is the proof of “human sacrifices” in that area? And even if there were some, does that reflect the entire area and all it’s sub-cultures and peoples? NO!
And what makes you think that these people would have been incapable of progress and reform FROM WITHIN their own belief systems??????
This is the big question. Where did you get the idea that “without Islam these people would still be doing this or that”????
How do you know? How do you know that none of the Dharmic religions from the East would not have made their way Westward and positively influenced the people without forcing them to give up their core beliefs, customs and deities?
I’ve also heard Indian Muslims and Christians say, “before my family converted to X-fill-in-the-blank-Abrahamic-faith we were cannibals and head hunters.” NONSENSE. As if the only choice is Abrahamic religion or head-hunting. There are a myriad of Dharmic faiths these people could have taken to. Or headhunters can reform themselves from within.
It’s not either/or.
They also like to believe that what they brought to India somehow “helped” it. Another huge NONSENSE.
Even now in India, despite the plethora of religious representation from every corner of the globe, there are STILL a few hundred (or more) headhunters and cannibals. Big Deal! Either these people will change from within or die off. I don’t see why Islam should be the answer to everything.
And more over, some horrible practices found in pockets here and there do not reflect on the entirety of the world’s indigenous traditions.
I simply cannot digest African and African descended people with Arabic names.
It’s not right and it’s a display of Islamic (ARAB) Imperialism.
Would you dare say that unless Islam (ARABS) had taken over the parts of Africa that it did that those Africans would be uncivilized today????
That Africa had no culture or religious traditions of worth before the arrival of Arabs?????
My opinion is that it’s better for Black people to get back to their African roots and rediscover the Indigenous Wisdom Traditions of Africa, not of Arabia.
On the matter of human sacrifice.
Again I’m not going to debate this – but on evidence for human sacrifice, you can feel free to research it.
It’s well known that there is evidence of human sacrifice in pre-dynastic Egypt, and the Naqada II Period.
It’s also debated in the field that such sacrifice took place occasionally in early Iron Age Israel, as well Phoenicia, and Carthage.
A couple of places to start at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/science/27ur.html?_r=2&ref=science
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/humansac.htm
http://gallery.sjsu.edu/sacrifice/sumerians.html
For a nuanced discussion see
A. R. W. Green’s “The role of human sacrifice in the ancient Near East” you should be able to find it in a library somewhere.
Again as a person of African descent who is very familiar with the history of Africa, firstly again Islam spread peacefully without Imperialism in many parts of Africa, and yes there were people in Africa who were utterly uncivilized without Islam to certain degrees. There is nothing bigoted and racist in saying that head hunting and human sacrifice is not exactly the most civilized thing, and yes this took place in many parts of pre-Islamic Africa. in fact, in some parts today, they still eat people 🙂
I’m exaggerating and playing this up a bit, I’m not saying that it’s all certain people do – running around and eating people. Of course racist and colonialist narriatives play this up, but lets be honest it did happen and is a fitting reply to your:
“Would you dare say that unless Islam (ARABS) had taken over the parts of Africa that it did that those Africans would be uncivilized today????
That Africa had no culture or religious traditions of worth before the arrival of Arabs???”
I never said that, nor did I remotely imply it, and you are projecting this onto me likely due to your own expectations concerning my discourse.
In other words – you are putting words into my mouth probably thinking you are debating with someone else.
No one ever said that this reflects the entirety of the world’s indengenous traditions, I never suggested this and the fact that you are projecting your own agenda and concerns onto my discourse means you never truly read it to begin with.
“Would you dare say that unless Islam (ARABS) had taken over the parts of Africa that it did that those Africans would be uncivilized today????”
I have to ask, where did I ever say this?
There are certainly some places in which this is the case, and certainly some cases in which native Africans had well developed and beautiful cultures and customs. And certainly places in which the people are very, very, grateful that Muslims came and taught them Islam (not Arabs even in many cases, Berbers, or other Sudani Africans)
Read with care and understand nuances – you are making general sweeping claims and making the same mistakes you are suggesting others are.
Perhaps you know that many (most? I don’t have statistics) Arab Muslims feel that Islam is the only real religion and all other religions and cultures outside of Arabicised Islamic culture is worthless and wrong.
I just replied to this on another comment, but I think you are exaggerating things, confusing Arab culture with Islam, and forgetting that Arabs are a statistical minority among Muslims. There are more Chinese and Malay Muslims, when you put them together, than Arabs period – either Christian or Muslim.
In any case this is not the proper understanding of Islam, Islam as I understand it sees itself as the seal of religions, whether you disagree or agree is not the point, but in any case it sees other religions as expressions of a perennial truth that have, through time, been eroded and gradually forgotten. In truth all religions are Islam, in that Islam simply means the surrender to the divine. This is the interpretation of Ibn Abbas, the foremost commentator of the Quran and the Prophet’s(saws) son in law, in the verse of the Quran that says “Verily the religion unto God is Islam” Ibn Abbas’s interpretation is that Islam simply refers to the act of surrender to God, not the historical religion revealed to Muhammad(saws).
So anyone truly surrendered to God, irrespective of whether they are even aware of the existence of Islam as a historical faith, is muslim in a sense and falls under this verse. Ibn Abbas’s.
The historical religion of Islam creates a faith community and a civilization and orders humanity along certain lines without which, we believe, many people would fall into greater error and commit greater injustices. I have no interest in bickering or debating this further, but I can say that when people have objectively looked at the historical evidence en masse, even some 19th century Christian missionaries or even free thinkers (like Richard Francis Burton, though there is some evidence he may have later become a crypto-Muslim) have noticed that Muslims positively impacted the world.
Someone who gets hung up on a narrow range of history or who insists on looking at certain verses of the Quran, poorly translated anyway, outside of their context and normative interpretation, may be prone to calling me disingenuous or perhaps ignorant of my own faith. I could honestly care less. Like al-Ghazzali I find active debate and argumentation on matters of religion to be noxious, and as the Quran simply says “to you your Din(law, way of life, religion) and to me mine”
So to you Salam, peace.